Labour will make it harder for ‘benefit cheats’ to find work, with a plan to ban them from driving for two years.
The proposal will also heavily impact people with long-term illnesses and disabilities who cannot work but will fall foul of proposals to tighten up the UK government’s definition of disability in order to claim that people are not ill when they really are.
It is part of a plan by Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall [pictured] to save the public purse billions of pounds. It seems concerns for UK citizens’ welfare (she is supposed to be running that part of the government that used to be called the “welfare state”, remember) are now very much secondary.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
The plans also include new powers to force banks to divulge to civil servants from the Department of Work and Pensions the private account details of benefit claimants, to help target investigations on people who appear to be cheating the system – in line with plans that were announced by the former Conservative government.
This is expected to face strong opposition, not only from privacy campaigners but from the banks themselves – all of whom are warning that it will invade claimants’ right to financial privacy, and could lead to legitimate claimants being wrongly investigated.
The Tories had claimed their plan would be “fully automated” – whatever that means, running within existing banking systems. Labour criticised the scheme as “poorly delineated” at the time and has now said its own version will require only “very limited information” to be shared with the government.
Ministers have tried to reassure critics by saying that the new law will not give the DWP power to access bank accounts directly but campaigners are not convinced; they say the plan to give the DWP power to instruct banks to access the information on its behalf is functionally the same.
The draft law would also give more powers to the Public Sector Fraud Authority, giving it more time to investigate complex cases of fraud that took place during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Current laws mean that repeat benefit cheats can already be imprisoned in the most serious cases.
From the BBC’s coverage, it seems ministers have estimated greater access to banking data could save the public purse £1.6 billion over five years by flagging accounts that are holding more than £16,000, the usual savings ceiling for being able to claim Universal Credit.
Those who are then left with debts of £1,000 or more could be punished with a driving ban of up to two years. This would be particularly harmful to people living in rural areas with limited public transport, who would be effectively tethered to villages and towns with extremely limited employment opportunities.
And of course Kendall already has plans to steal billions of pounds from disabled people by changing the conditions under which they can claim benefits in order to say – falsely – that claimants are not disabled at all.
The combination of these plans will create a potentially lethal cocktail of benefit deprivation that will hit both the physical and mental health of disabled people, leading to another increase in deaths (sick and disabled people have died en masse due to previous benefit restrictions by the Tories and New Labour, going back at least as far as 2008).
But the government won’t mind because it has no facilities for monitoring such fatalities and no interest in creating them. Out of sight, out of mind – right?
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Follow Vox Political writer Mike Sivier on BlueSky
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
Labour will make it harder for ‘benefit cheats’ to find work
Labour will make it harder for ‘benefit cheats’ to find work, with a plan to ban them from driving for two years.
The proposal will also heavily impact people with long-term illnesses and disabilities who cannot work but will fall foul of proposals to tighten up the UK government’s definition of disability in order to claim that people are not ill when they really are.
It is part of a plan by Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall [pictured] to save the public purse billions of pounds. It seems concerns for UK citizens’ welfare (she is supposed to be running that part of the government that used to be called the “welfare state”, remember) are now very much secondary.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
The plans also include new powers to force banks to divulge to civil servants from the Department of Work and Pensions the private account details of benefit claimants, to help target investigations on people who appear to be cheating the system – in line with plans that were announced by the former Conservative government.
This is expected to face strong opposition, not only from privacy campaigners but from the banks themselves – all of whom are warning that it will invade claimants’ right to financial privacy, and could lead to legitimate claimants being wrongly investigated.
The Tories had claimed their plan would be “fully automated” – whatever that means, running within existing banking systems. Labour criticised the scheme as “poorly delineated” at the time and has now said its own version will require only “very limited information” to be shared with the government.
Ministers have tried to reassure critics by saying that the new law will not give the DWP power to access bank accounts directly but campaigners are not convinced; they say the plan to give the DWP power to instruct banks to access the information on its behalf is functionally the same.
The draft law would also give more powers to the Public Sector Fraud Authority, giving it more time to investigate complex cases of fraud that took place during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Current laws mean that repeat benefit cheats can already be imprisoned in the most serious cases.
From the BBC’s coverage, it seems ministers have estimated greater access to banking data could save the public purse £1.6 billion over five years by flagging accounts that are holding more than £16,000, the usual savings ceiling for being able to claim Universal Credit.
Those who are then left with debts of £1,000 or more could be punished with a driving ban of up to two years. This would be particularly harmful to people living in rural areas with limited public transport, who would be effectively tethered to villages and towns with extremely limited employment opportunities.
And of course Kendall already has plans to steal billions of pounds from disabled people by changing the conditions under which they can claim benefits in order to say – falsely – that claimants are not disabled at all.
The combination of these plans will create a potentially lethal cocktail of benefit deprivation that will hit both the physical and mental health of disabled people, leading to another increase in deaths (sick and disabled people have died en masse due to previous benefit restrictions by the Tories and New Labour, going back at least as far as 2008).
But the government won’t mind because it has no facilities for monitoring such fatalities and no interest in creating them. Out of sight, out of mind – right?
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Follow Vox Political writer Mike Sivier on BlueSky
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
you might also like
Let’s start the New Year with some hopeful news
More mistakes in the script? Correcting Cameron’s New Year speech
Osborne wants a ‘year of hard truths’. Here’s one: He’s HIDING the truth